AWS Study Notes
Overview
Study notes for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate (SAA) and Professional (SAP) certification exams, plus general software architecture concepts applicable to real-world practice.
Notes are organized by domain. Each note follows a consistent structure: Overview → Key Features → Exam Tips → Cross-Cloud Equivalents.
Mock Quiz
Practice with 1,019 SAA-C03 exam questions. Four modes: Random Mix, Focused Study, Timed Exam (130 min), and Weak Areas.
Start Mock Quiz
1,019 SAA-C03 questions — random, focused, timed, or weak-area modes.
Quiz History
Review past attempts, scores, and domain-level performance breakdowns.
The Potato
Fred Cheung · @CookedRicer
Software Developer · AWS Community Builder · AWS UGHK
Compute
Amazon EC2
Virtual servers — instance families, AMIs, placement groups, purchasing options, and lifecycle management.
AWS Lambda
Serverless compute — event-driven functions, concurrency models, cold starts, and invocation types.
Amazon ECS and EKS
Container orchestration — ECS vs EKS, Fargate vs EC2 launch types, and task networking.
Auto Scaling
Dynamic capacity — scaling policies, warm pools, mixed instances, and Application Auto Scaling.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
PaaS deployment — deployment policies, .ebextensions, environment tiers, and RDS integration.
Networking
Amazon VPC
Virtual network — subnets, NAT, security groups vs NACLs, VPC endpoints, peering, and Transit Gateway.
Amazon Route 53
DNS service — record types, Alias vs CNAME, routing policies, health checks, and private hosted zones.
Amazon CloudFront
CDN — edge caching, OAC, cache behaviours, signed URLs, and edge functions.
Elastic Load Balancing
Load balancers — ALB vs NLB vs GWLB, routing rules, health checks, and sticky sessions.
Direct Connect and VPN
Hybrid connectivity — DX architecture, VIF types, Site-to-Site VPN, and redundancy patterns.
Storage
Amazon EBS
Block storage for EC2 — gp3, io2, st1, sc1 volume types and use cases.
Amazon S3
Object storage — storage classes, lifecycle, versioning, replication, and Object Lock.
Amazon EFS and FSx
Managed file storage — EFS (NFS), FSx for Windows/Lustre/NetApp ONTAP, and storage protocol reference.
AWS Storage Gateway
Hybrid cloud storage bridge — S3 File, FSx File, Volume (Cached/Stored), and Tape Gateway.
Database
Amazon RDS and Aurora
Managed relational databases — Multi-AZ HA, Read Replicas, and Aurora cloud-native architecture.
Amazon DynamoDB and DocumentDB
NoSQL databases — DynamoDB key-value/document model and DocumentDB (MongoDB-compatible).
Amazon ElastiCache
In-memory caching — Redis vs Memcached, caching strategies, and cluster modes.
Amazon Timestream
Serverless time-series database — IoT metrics, monitoring data, and purpose-built SQL functions.
Security
AWS IAM
Identity and access — users, roles, policies, evaluation logic, permission boundaries, and federation.
AWS Organizations
Multi-account management — OUs, SCPs, consolidated billing, and Control Tower.
AWS KMS and CloudHSM
Encryption services — envelope encryption, key types, key policies, and hardware security modules.
AWS Secrets Manager
Secret storage — automatic rotation, RDS integration, and comparison with SSM Parameter Store.
AWS WAF and Shield
Web application and DDoS protection — web ACLs, managed rules, Shield Standard vs Advanced.
Amazon GuardDuty
Threat detection — ML-based analysis of VPC Flow Logs, DNS logs, CloudTrail, and more.
Amazon Macie
Sensitive data discovery — automated S3 scanning for PII, PHI, credentials, and compliance.
Messaging and Integration
Amazon SQS and SNS
Queue and pub/sub — SQS decoupling, SNS fan-out, FIFO ordering, and dead-letter queues.
Amazon EventBridge
Event bus — content-based routing, SaaS integration, schema registry, and archive/replay.
AWS Step Functions
Workflow orchestration — state machines, Standard vs Express, distributed Map, and error handling.
Amazon API Gateway
Managed API front door — REST vs HTTP vs WebSocket, throttling, caching, and authorization.
Migration
AWS DMS
Database migration — Full Load, CDC, schema conversion, and heterogeneous migration support.
AWS DataSync and Snow Family
Data transfer — online file sync and offline petabyte-scale physical device migration.
Monitoring and Compliance
Amazon CloudWatch
Observability — metrics, logs, alarms, dashboards, agent, and Logs Insights queries.
AWS X-Ray
Distributed tracing — trace requests across microservices, service map, and sampling rules.
AWS Config
Configuration compliance — rules, conformance packs, remediation, and multi-account aggregation.
Analytics
Amazon Redshift
Cloud data warehouse — MPP architecture, distribution styles, Spectrum, and Serverless.
Amazon Athena
Serverless SQL on S3 — Presto-based, pay-per-scan, Glue Catalog integration, and Federated Query.
Amazon Kinesis and Managed Flink
Real-time data streaming — KDS, Firehose, and stateful stream processing with Apache Flink.
AWS Glue
Serverless ETL and Data Catalog — Crawlers, Spark ETL jobs, Glue Studio, and DataBrew.
Architecture Concepts
Disaster Recovery Strategies
RTO/RPO fundamentals and DR patterns — Backup & Restore through Multi-Site Active/Active.
Database Performance Fundamentals
Core performance metrics — IOPS, throughput, WAL, and OLTP vs OLAP workload models.
ETL and ELT Fundamentals
Extract, Transform, Load — data pipeline patterns, data cleansing, and AWS implementation options.
Migration Strategies (7 Rs)
Cloud migration decision framework — Retire, Retain, Relocate, Rehost, Replatform, Repurchase, Refactor.
Cost Optimization
AWS cost management — pricing models, right-sizing, Savings Plans, and cost management tools.
Well-Architected Framework
Six pillars — operational excellence, security, reliability, performance, cost, and sustainability.
Serverless Patterns
Event-driven architecture — synchronous APIs, fan-out, choreography vs orchestration, and anti-patterns.